Cold World
The Stars Are Dead Now

That Germany had one of the most important scenes in the black metal landscape was certainly no news, but that it had "expansionist" ambitions even towards the Depressive movement is a novelty of the latest years; among the renowned names of Anti, Nargaroth, and Wigrid (not forgetting some peripheral realities to the genre such as Vinterriket and Necrofrost) recently also appeared the name of the young Gorge Borner, mind and sole arm of the project Coldworld.

"The Stars Are Dead Now" (sometimes the title appears all together) is the EP that opens the group's career, in 2006; just under thirty minutes that convincingly retrace the most European atmospheres of the depressive branch, citing the usual clichés but knowing how to give the music an unmistakable halo, which is quite peculiar for a band linked to these sounds.

The style is unmistakably linked to that of the bands mentioned at the beginning of the review: only the more Burzumian side of depressive black, represented (it would be more correct to say "cloned") by the Teutonic Wigrid is missing. The footsteps that Borner prefers to follow are therefore those of the duo Anti/Nargaroth: clean sound, professional production, and absence of cacophony prepare the listener positively, facilitating the reception of the sounds, in contrast to the agitation state in which the American school prefers to plunge the user (as for example happens with the compositions of Xasthur and Leviathan).

If this is the starting point, several solutions are adopted from time to time, transitioning from slower and more reflective tracks ("This Empty Life" and "Cancer") to pieces with a thrash flavor ("Hate"), up to the final "The Old Ghost In The Well", the result of a way of conceiving the ambient still very much linked to experiments on the early Burzum records. As the album progresses, the influence of the German Anti becomes increasingly important, especially in the approach to the six strings: the sound is cold and surgical, but it lacks that Nordic frost one would expect; in fact, it delights in recreating somewhat gray and squalid atmospheres, the result of a landscape more akin to a power station than a Norwegian fjord.

It must be said that this work maintains unusually high standards for a debut: the quality of the individual tracks is always at a superior level, and the ability to craft this art into always new perspectives gives hope for a future as interesting as ever, if not bright: the symbol of this approach is certainly the penultimate "Suicide", with its dreamy, ethereal, and deeply melancholic atmospheres (the opening seems to reinterpret in a more metallic key typically Dark Wave compositions).

But the jewel of the album is certainly at the initial "This Empty Life": sharp voice in an affected and disillusioned scream; slow and solemn rhythm; guitar in the background, soft, calm. The true strength lies in the keyboard compositions, focused on violins, violas, and cellos weaving celestial textures, as light to the ear as they are heavy for the soul; the music seems to suggest a less desperate landscape than other Depressive releases: immersed among the statues and greenery of an isolated cemetery, we come into contact with large white marble angels, golden mosaics, climbing ivy, the dew of the tombstones at dawn; and we hope that one day all this will be ours, and we are thankful that this album exists to bear witness to it.

If only...

Deathinaugust 09/08/198x - 03/10/2007 Friend, son, brother. May your soul always be with us."